Steven Edward Riley Jr. and Ina Thea Kenoyer (Steven Edward Riley/Facebook)
A 48-year-old woman in North Dakota may spend the rest of her life in a state correctional facility for killing her husband last year, fatally poisoning the 51-year-old man by putting antifreeze in his beverage in hopes of getting her hands on his multimillion dollar inheritance that did not exist.
Ina Thea Kenoyer on Wednesday pleaded guilty to one count of felony murder — intentional, knowing, or with extreme indifference in the 2023 slaying of Steven Edward Riley Jr., court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to a news release from the Minot Police Department, the investigation into Kenoyer began on Sept. 3, 2023, when Riley was transported to Trinity Hospital, which is about 100 miles north of Bismarck, North Dakota. Due to the severity of his condition, Riley was airlifted to CHI Alexius Hospital in Bismarck, but died on Sept. 5.
A subsequent autopsy determined that Riley’s manner of death was homicide and the cause of death was ethylene glycol poisoning, authorities said.
About two months after Riley’s death, police on Oct. 30, 2023, placed Kenoyer under arrest, stating that she had “financial motives to murder Riley.” Since her initial arrest, she’s been held in detention on bond of $1 million cash.
“This case was extremely complex,” Investigations Commander Capt. Dale Plessas said in a statement following the arrest. “Thank you to everyone who provided us with information that helped our investigators piece this together.”
According to a report from the Minot Daily News, in the aftermath of Riley’s death, friends and family members came forward and told investigators that Kenoyer had previously made comments about poisoning her longtime boyfriend with antifreeze. They also reportedly noted that Kenoyer suddenly began claiming that Riley had been poisoned by someone while he was at the hospital being treated.
The motive for the murder was a scam about a $30 million inheritance that had been left to Riley by a distant relative which duped both him and Kenoyer, Bismarck CBS affiliate KXMB reported.
After learning about the “inheritance,” Riley reportedly began telling friends that he planned to leave Kenoyer and split the money between him and his sons.
When speaking to police, Kenoyer said she was aware of the inheritance, explaining that she would be entitled to a portion of it because she was Riley’s common-law wife at the time of his death. When detectives informed her that the state of North Dakota did not recognize common-law marriages, she became visibly upset, per the Minot Daily News.
While executing a search warrant on the couple’s home, police reportedly recovered a glass beer mug and a plastic beer from the garage, both of which tested positive for antifreeze.
She eventually admitted that she put antifreeze in a mug of Riley’s sweet tea with the intention of killing him.
Kenoyer will appear before North Central Judicial District Court Judge Richard L. Hagar on Aug. 13 for her sentencing hearing. She faces a maximum possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility for parole.
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